A small group of protesters – distraught over a newly opened disco and a planned shopping center near the killing grounds of Auschwitz – angrily demonstrated yesterday outside the Polish Consulate in Midtown.

“This is a crime against humanity,” cried Auschwitz survivor David Israel, 71, outside the East 37th Street consulate. “It must become a monument for the future generations to see what the Nazis did to human beings.”

The disco, which opened last week, is housed in a building formerly used to sort the hair of Jews murdered in the former concentration camp.

And even though the mayor of Oswiecim, Poland – the town where Auschwitz is located – defended the disco, many feel that it is sacred ground and has no place hosting tourism and heavy-metal music.

“This is the world’s largest Jewish cemetery,” said Robert Kunst, 58, president of Shalom International. “This would never be permitted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or Arlington Cemetery.

“It shows a total lack of respect.”

A simultaneous protest was held in Washington yesterday. Many feel the Auschwitz disco is only the first step in a process by the Polish government, along with Germany, to downplay the number of Jews killed in concentration camps.

“What Poland and Germany are doing is trying to make it so that no future generation will know people were killed there,” Kunst said. “This is a political holocaust.”

The protest comes at the beginning of the United Nations Summit, with more than 150 world leaders convene in Manhattan this week to discuss many different world issues.

City officials are urging New York to use mass transit and to especially avoid driving on the East Side, as traffic delays and occasional street closings are expected all week.